Member-only story
The Last Wife Standing
The ghosts of his past wives lingered in the halls of the mansion.
The first time Rhea saw the house on the cliffs, her heart hammered in her chest like it was trying to beat its way out of her body. Her new husband must have sensed her unease because he grasped her hand and squeezed it.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked in a voice that was meant for her ears alone. She nodded, licking her dry lips, and he chuckled. “It’ll be home to you soon enough.”
He didn’t add that three women before her had also called the place home once upon a time. They tried not to talk about those long-ago wives — or so he treated them, as if they were the burned pages of a history he no longer associated with himself.
The women that had preceded her were all enigmas, faceless and nameless, the perfect kind of mysteries. Maybe she wanted them to stay that way.
Rhea wanted to believe she was the last — the one that would last.
That night as she stood overlooking the faraway ocean, her husband came up behind her to wrap his arms around her shoulders. He pressed a familiar kiss to her throat and murmured, “What do you say we acquaint ourselves with the bed?”
